tonight on "nightline," mommy war. first, it was the tiger mom who outlawed sleepovers. now it's lion moms, even teddy bear moms? tonight, the debate over who is right and whether you're doing something wrong in raising your kids. plus, gimme shelter. allegations of shocking corruption by top housing officials with millions wasted on belly dancers, secret lawsuits and living space for the dead. brian ross investigates. and, star-crossed. an astronomer throws a cosmic

wrench into the zodiac, but he never expected that. why as troll. in crisis is tonight's "sign of the times." >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran, cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," january 26th, 2011. >> and good evening from a snowy new york. we begin tonight with parenting. dr. spock baby and child care book has sold more than 50 million copies since its 1946 publication. but now, a new kind of parenting book is flying off the shelves, and the author we speak with tonight has critics roaring about her sharp-clawed advice. here's juju chang to talk with the author, and with moms of a few different stripes. >> reporter: parenting has

become a competition of style. and there's a me marriage ree of mothers writing about how they are raising the perfect cub. meet amy chua. better known as the tiger mom. >> my daughter said, i hate math, i'm bald at math. i didn't accept that. i said, i'm making these practice test, and i hand wrote them and i did this with her for a week and the next test, she did really well and guess what? she decided she didn't hate math. her parents started calling her a math whiz and now math is one of her favorite subjects. >> reporter: i don't know whether to be repulsed by that or completely jealous that you are able to do that. >> maybe it's both. >> reporter: maybe. maybe that's why you're getting such a strong reaction. when her book was show cased under the provocative headline, "chinese mothers are superior," it sparked a massive debate about permissiveness and parenting. her book, she says, is about being strong, fierce and

uncompromising about high expectations. here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do, she wrote. attend a sleepover, have a play date. watch tv or play computer games. get any grade less than an a. play any instrument other than the piano or violin. why? because on page eight, she writes, drums can lead to drug use. she denied bathroom breaks during piano practice and called her daughter garbage when she acted up at a dinner party. one of the more controversial excerpts from the book is when you rejected your daughter's mother day card. how cruel. >> that was -- >> reporter: let's face it, the card was feeble, and i was busted. if i tried my best at something, you would never throw it back in my face. >> never. never. >> reporter: the response has been fierce in news reports -- >> amy has set off a firestorm. >> reporter: magazine covers. and especially mommy blogs. >> there are all kinds of

reasons why people are not succeeding and to say we're being too nice to children is, i think that's truly not the case. >> reporter: erika is a den mother at harvard with a background in early education. >> there's a bit of a misconception about play that, oh, yes, it's really nice and if you want your kinds to be happy and well adjusted, well, let them play. no, it has real cognitive benefits and those have been well established for decades. >> reporter: she calls herself a dolphin mom because dolphins learn through play. >> actually, you can be a strong parent just as a dolphin is actually a top predator and a carnivore and quite a tough animal. you can be a strong parent. and not literally devour your children with your own rather narrowly defined expectations. >> reporter: and then there's lucy, editor in chief of "self" magazine. she calls herself a lion mother. a lion mother is busy, hunting, taking care of the whole pride, right?

but the cub is in a very secure place but free to find their own way. >> reporter: that cub? lucy's son, julian, a well-rounded scholar athlete who is now on his way to the ivy league. >> they weren't strict but they weren't lenient. they knew i had to do my work. >> i gave total freedom, not freedom to misbehave, but freedom to find your own thing. so, if he tried piano and didn't like it, we gave up piano and tried guitar. if he didn't like that, he started singing. and, you know, he found his own way. i said, well, why didn't you like it when i made you do it? and he said, well, because you were making me do it. >> reporter: chua has raised two daughters who are, by all accounts, well adjusted and successful. the older one played carnegie hall at age 14. both are straight-a students. and the book may be climbing the best seller list because people

want the recipe for her success. >> good, good, good. >> reporter: author po bronson points to research that suggests chua may be onto something. >> 85% of american parents think it's important to tell their kid they're smart. why? we wanted to be an angel on their shoulder, riding along with them to give them confidence. >> reporter: thisser are searcher compared children in illinois and congress hong. she gave them a test. the mothers were given five minutes with their kids before the test was given again. watch the american mothers' reactions. >> you did really good on this test. >> i missed two in the first section. >> some kids missed a lot more than that. >> reporter: the mothers in hong kong came in and started working with their children, going over their mistakes. when the tests were given again? >> the american kids, because

they had a little practice, did a little bit better, but the chinese kids did 33% better, a whopping jump in their performance, right after this little instruction period with their mothers. >> reporter: i was raised as a tiger cub, driven to get good grades, excel in swimming. losing was bad news and i hated it. i swore i would never raise my kids that way. i am more of a teddy bear mom. what are you going to do with this teddy? oh, you have both of them? are they so delicious? though i have my grizzly moments. let me introduce you to the broom closet. >> i experience them as extremely loving and supportive, even as they were very tough. we do have that in common, because it's not that i don't love my parents, it's not that i even am mad at them it's just, i responded to their pressure in a very negative way. >> and so did many of my friends, so did many of my friends. you know, another side of this is, when you talk about

achievement and pressure, i just -- that's not what i am about. myself. i don't know about other parents. my youngest sister has down syndrome. this is like the best of, i think, west and east, using these terms broadly. when she was first born, we had relatives that said, we can just send her back to asia, nobody has to know about it. terrible. but what happened is, i think my mother applied tiger mothering to my youngest sister and nobody expected her to get as or to go to college, but my mother taught her how to tie her own shoe laces, when other people said she couldn't. she played piano with her, she drove math with her. and now my sister works at walmart, she has a boyfriend, she's independent, she loves playing the piano. and she has high self-esteem. she has a great relationship with my mom. >> reporter: so, in the end, it's about pushing your child to live up to their potential. >> yes, but always with love. i think that's the crucial thing. it's got to be high expectations coupled with love and listening. >> reporter: a lesson she

learned when her youngest daughter started to repebblbel. >> at some point, i realized, she hates me, i'm going to lose my daughter if i don't pull back. the last third of the book, it's not a tiger, it's a crying little rabbit. >> reporter: chua eventually let her daughter quit orchestra and now allows an occasional sleepover. so, to hold onto her daughter's love, the tiger mom in this stable turns into a rabbit. i'm juju chang for "nightline" in new york. >> it's a noah's ark of motherhood out there. when we come back, housing authority money allegedly spent on belly dancers and court settlements. we investigate. ♪ professional driver on a closed course. ♪ do not attempt at home.

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well, each year, about $26 billion in taxpayer money is spent to provide housing for needy americans. at least that's how much is alotted for public housing. where some of that money actually goes may unfortunately be another question. at least 43 local housing officials were convicted of crimes in the last two years, and some of the allegations are shocking. tonight, brian ross is here with his investigation. brian? >> reporter: cynthia, our "nightline" invest game found that the federal housing program is plagued by theft and corruption and income me tenls at local levels, spending millions of dollars on housing for sex offenders and dead people, and all too often,

failing the 3 million families who rely on federal housing for a clean, safe place to live. officials in washington have long praised the way the philadelphia housing authority opera operates. apparently unaware, or unconcerned, that its executive director, carl green, was spending lavishly on parties, belly dancers and all, and used more than a half million dollars in housing authority money to secretly settle a series of claims by female employees, with his own board later concluding that green was a true serial sexual harasser. >> asked them to dinner, drinks, under the guise of doing business. when he was rebuffed, they would then be isolated. >> reporter: but that was hardly the worst of mr. green's legacy. the same month as his belly dancer party, 12-year-old ebb

ebony suffered a fear fatal asthma attack. >> nobody cared. >> reporter: years of unrepaired water leaks, she says, turned her home into a toxic pit full of the asthma-causing mold. >> they ignored it. they ignored everything i said to them. >> reporter: ebony may never walk or talk again, and while the housing authority denied any wrong doing or responsible, it settled out of court for $9.6 million. >> you go from looking at your 12-year-old dancing, talking and to the next day, got a trach, a feeding tube and you can't hear here say anything. >> reporter: last fall, after a series of newspaper exposes on gone's mismanagement, wasteful spending and personal financial trouble, green was forced out of his $300,000 a year job that had made him a man about town,

running the country's fourth largest public housing authority. green would not talk with us, but his lawyer says the belly dancers were part of a diversity program. and green told our station in philadelphia his problems were not connected to his job performance. >> i just wanted to assure everyone that this is really not bearing on the stewardship and management at pha. >> reporter: but now the fbi is investigating the housing authority and prosecutors have issued a range of subpoenas. >> we expect the agency in washington, d.c. ought to be making sure that every taxpayer dollar is spent in a responsible way. >> reporter: yet, top officials in washington, at the department of housing and urban development, hud, continue to praise green's accomplishments. >> i would say the philadelphia housing authority did a good job. >> reporter: sandy enree kez, the assistant secretary of housing, says the focus on carl green overshadows a lot of good work, including several

revitalized projects she recently toured in philadelphia. >> i just find it amazing that the, the before and the after. >> reporter: but she was one aware of the case of ebony, or the $9.6 million payment because of the alleged failure of the housing authority to keep her home's safe. what about ebony? >> i'm not familiar with that name. >> reporter: she was 12, had an asthma attack, near fatal brain damage. >> and which housing authority was this? >> reporter: in philadelphia. she finally acknowledged there might have been a problem in philadelphia in ebony's case, but maintained overall that hud is keeping a close eye on the country's low income housing authorities. >> i think a vast majority of housing thorgt authorities are doing a good job. >> reporter: but our investigation uncovered a range of problems across the country. one top local official used taxpayer money to buy this $1

million mansion np florida. all the property of this man, chief financial officer for the new orleans housing authority. convicted of embezzlement and sent to prison. one of at least 43 housing officials across the country we found convicted of crimes over the last two years. >> public housing often is the course of last resort for many people and to take money away from them, you know, is a sad commentary. >> reporter: inspector general kenneth donahue, who has since left his post, say s krugs, frad and income me tenls flourished as washington housing officials were asleep at the switch. >> we're failing taxpayers. >> reporter: incredibly, investigators found an estimated $7 million in payments to provide housing for dead people. >> so, was this income me tenls or fraud? >> it's a little bit of both. >> reporter: investigators found an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 sex offenders living in subsidizing

housing. >> i don't know exactly how that happened. >> reporter: somebody -- >> i really -- this is -- this is truly a difficult issue. what do our actions say, when it comes to our attention. that is the bottom line. >> reporter: but for too many housing residents, the bottom line remains one of neglect. for more than a decade, officials have promised action for the 320 families who live in the projects in sanford, florida, where in some places, the walls were literally crumbling around them. >> we have mold, this old, rotten wood. i'm just so ready to get out of here. not being able to give my kids what they need, the good environment. >> reporter: late last year, after a decade of complaints and deterioration, officials finally deemed this place uninhabitable and most of the families were moved out.

where's the urgency? for the people living there every day, it's really hell for them. >> i do understand that. there is urgency, trust me, there really is. >> reporter: and now, in sanford, the correction will be to knock down most of the public housing managed or mismanaged by the local authority. here, and in so many other places, the slum lord has been the federal government. for "nightline," this is brian ross, abc news. >> our thanks to brian ross for that important investigation. up next, an astrom her's claim that the signs of the zodiac have shifted controversy to rattle the heavens. we looked at the case of astro the "nightly stu hing": i can't breathe... so i can't sleep... and the next day i pay for it. i tried decongestants... i tossed & turned... i even vaporized! and then i fought back: with new drug-free breathe right advanced.

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from new york city with cynthia mcfadden. >> so, what if the star weren't really aligned the way we always thought they were? well, one astronomer claims they are not, which means the zodiac sign you grew up with may not really be your sign after all. imagine if the day you thought you were supposed to be finalizing a project at work was actually a day you were supposed to be making a relationship change? oops. for jeremy hubbard, the scrambled zodiac is a "sign of the times." >> reporter: this is quite literally a "sign of the times," when the news broke that we've been mistaken about our zodiac signs all along, it made a lot of people furious. >> my little sister, woo. i'm not going to stop being that, hell no. >> reporter: could this shift cause a national identity crisis? >> i don't --

>> i like my sign. >> reporter: blame parke kunkle for this. >> i do care that people use what's real out there. science is about data, and about looking at the way things really are. >> reporter: he teaches astronomy, the study of stars and plan ends in minnesota. two weeks ago, he was quoted in an article explaining how the earth wobbles when it orbits. >> so, what we're seeing, the axis pointing to different parts of the sky. and that's what causes the sun to be in different parts. >> reporter: that means the zodiac calendar, as we know it, has been thrown out of whack by about a month. and instead of the 12 signs we're familiar with, there's actually a 13th, those born between november 29th and december 17th are now a different sign. astronomers have known about this new sign for centuries. but it was news to those who

believed the stars and planets have an impact on our lives. scary news. >> this is 3,000-year-old information that periodically comes out in the media and this time it just went viral. >> reporter: the visit tree y'all has gone viral, too. facebook and twitter exploding with the story. have we been living a lie? there are pices who are peeved they're not aquarius. capricorns livid at becoming a sagittarius. and plus, imagine the confusion it will cause with that pickup line, hey, baby, what's your sign? i sat down with a prom innocent astrologer in new york. have you gotten calls from your clients, celebrities who said, wait a minute, what's going on? >> that is what every person said. they said, am i still my sign? and, again, that shows how much people resonate wit because it is shown to be accurate in their lives. >> what sign are you? >> reporter: can you guess? i'm in tv, that might give you some indicator.

i like attention. >> leo? >> reporter: she guessed it. are we predictable or what? for those of us who are pretty sure reading the mothhoroscope low us can poe us, it's reassuring that we can continue to rely on them to guide our careers and lives. do you know any astrologers that are going to include the new sign? >> i don't think so. the way it's been practiced is for thousands of years and it's not really going to change. >> reporter: the instructor who started it all says he's stunned by the seismic rumble he caused. >> on the positive side, i had one beautiful woman ask me for my autograph. >> reporter: maybe if he had read his horoscope, he would have seen this coming. i'm jeremy hubbard for "nightline" in new york. >> well, i'm a gemini and i'm staying one. you decide if it's still written in the stars. when we come back, the lengths parents go to for their kids. but first, here's jimmy kimmel with what's coming up next. jimmy? >> jimmy: tonight on the show, amy poehler is here.

martha plimpton is with us. we have music from cold war kids and it's our eighth anniversary, so, bring a gift. "jimmy kimmel live" is next.